Last night I spoke at an event in Manchester for the Royal Manchester Childrens Hospital “Many Hands” Campaign.  Raising money for the Childrens hospital by encouraging lots of businesses to get engaged and raise a thousand pounds, I was asked to say a few words on the benefits of having a strong CSR position as a business.

Aside from the obvious things which you can read anywhere around risk management and reputation, I thought I’d use an environmental acronym to position where I think business procurement is at.

T - Technical Solution.  Businesses don’t buy you because you’ve got a strong CSR position. It will be taken as one of a series of things in the supply arrangement.  You have to be able to satisfy their technical solution to a problem first.  Whether that be via a box of tricks or a service.

R – ROI.   We’ve been at the forefront of environmental best practice for over fifteen years and one thing that is as clear as day is that the numbers matter.  Unless you can make the business case work first, people won’t attach a premium to your product or service.  In some instances – such as public sector – you can derive some small premium of 2-3% because of government initiatives to accelerate the CO2 footprint of the public sector.

E - Environmental.  This is all about CO2 and the cradle to grave footprint on the environment.  You’ll get to this if you satisfy T+R.

E - Ethical.  Beyond the attributes of the product itself and into the overall approach to doing business.  Choices you make in your supply chain and your holistic approach to business.

S – Stakeholders.   How those benefits can be used in your business or your customers business to further their aspirations, meet their targets or CSR aims.

So, if you want to sell to me, you need to act like a TREE  

In our own organisation, we look for suppliers and initiatives which are cost effective, cost-reducing, easy to implement and wherever possible give us some stakeholder advantage. 

When the Rubber Hits the Road

Does everything need to have a business case?  If we’re talking about the deterioritation of the planet, is there an ROI attached to it?  Here lies my last point.  Sometimes it’s just about doing the right thing.  Giving a hand of help, showing leadership, taking an early adopter position.  However, if you are turned on by the numbers, here’s a few to throw at you: -

1. We’ve more than halved our energy consumption in less than 5 years.
2. Water consumption is down 21%.
3. Our length of service across the business exceeds eleven years.
4. Our sickness ratge is 40% lower than the national average (increased productivity).
5. We’ve recieved a colossal number of awards resulting in many hundreds of thousands of pounds of free publicity for the business, enhancing our Corporate Reputation.

Later this month, I’ll be visiting Buckingham Palace to collect a Queens Award on behalf of the company for our leadership in this area.  We’ve proved that by joining the dots up in your organisation, you can still be very business focussed when it comes to CSR, but you can still achieve the end game, do good and have a little fun along the way.

I’d encourage any business to get involved in the Many Hands campaign.  I like the idea so much because it’s not just about opening up a cheque book, it’s about how and what you do with your people to achieve the goal.  Along the way, you’ll meet lots of other businesses, some new contacts and end up doing something really brilliant for kids that need it.  Experiences need to be experential, your people need to get involved emotionally if they are to buy in to your ideas and working alongside good causes is a great way to achieve that.

I closed my talk yesterday by saying “Be MAD For It” – MAD meaning “Make A Difference”.  Being able to help others is the most wonderful way of helping yourself, your own esteem and growing as a leader. 

What can business do to contribute to the big society ideal formed by the government? That was the main question primed towards a small audience of business leaders by Business In The Community at an event in Manchester tonight.  I hadn’t really given it much thought previously, however in the surroundings of Manchester Business School and in the company of some bright minds we attempted to try and identify just some of the facilitators and barriers.

What’s obvious is that there are no easy answers or quick fixes.  There is a massive societal shift needed. Who will move first?  Is competition too fierce in the global economy now for us to adopt these holistic ideals?  There were some interesting points made, however it was clear that it won’t be easy to get quick traction.  Nevertheless, here’s a few of the points I thought relevant (in no particular order).

• Will people be prepared to work less hours for less pay to see more people in employment? - Tough one and the government might not like the answer.  We live in an age of consumption.  Of acquiring things.  My device is better than your device.  My TV is bigger than your TV.  Will people be prepared to trade down for the bigger good?
• There’s no financial incentive. You really want to motivate a businessperson to get involved, show them an opportunity, not a draw on their time.
• The bulk of business people represented on panels like this are normally large and successful. You only needed to see the audience in the room tonight.  All Gen X.  Board Directors in successful businesses.  You wont hear the view of  SME’s who make up 99.8% of business.  They are the ones you need engaged too as they employ half the UK workforce and can be more inciteful as to the conditions they would need to donate their time.
• If the Big society makes us globally uncompetitive, forget it. Harsh, however social investments rely on economic prosperity, a fine balance.
• Do Generation Y care like Generation X do? Generation Y (digital natives) have a completely different outlook on life.  They are pursuing fame and instant fortune (bit stereotypical I know), however this may get in the way of their ambitions.  You have to incentivise at all levels to get change happening.
• You need some new innovation in there somewhere. Salami slicing public sector expenditure and then shifting the burden to business, just isn’t on.  We all know the public sector is hugely inefficient in many areas.  Why not incentivise private sector business to drive savings and efficiency in public sector?
• Get local government to spend more of their grant with local businesses, not on national contracts. They can then insist on some of the big society ideals as part of the supply agreement.  Seen it done already and it works.
• The future isn’t public or private. It’s a fusion of both in the big society.  A fusion of Enterprise.  Rip down the barriers to enterprise.  Make public sector procurement easier.  Making the planning process easier for businesses to build the premises they need.  By expanding, there will be more jobs in the economy.  Carving up current jobs – in my view – just isn’t the answer.
• Do people have the time for all this? People are pressured.  T.A.T. rules.  Time is at a premium.  Work/Life blend is poor.

I’m not negative about it, just realistic. I’d love to see a society, which is more like Japan for example.  Purposeful.  Respectful.  More societal in its outlook.  However, people will need to see quick and early wins for this one to make it’s way out of the manifesto and into everyday practice.  It’s a big job, however a worthy aim.  What do you think?

“Maybe what got us here, may not get us there,” proclaimed Manchester City Football Club Chief Executive – Garry Cook – at their inaugral City Business Leaders breakfast at the City of Manchester Stadium this morning.  Describing the process of change that the club has undergone, the club has benefitted from massive investment from its Abu Dhabi owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and embarked on a programme of massive investment on and off the pitch.

Addressing an audience of around eighty business leaders, with a common interest in that they are all City fans, Cook went on to talk about the numbers, the culture change they have undergone, their global ambition and their “fix, build and grow” mode since being acquired in September 2008.   Flanked by CFO – Graham Wallis – who eloquently explained the massive investment phase of their cycle (hence huge annual losses of circa £121.3M), both executives went to great lengths to explain that this was part of the plan.  I did smile when Graham Wallis described them as being “virtually debt free,” (the club has long term commercial bank debt of £37M, not insignificant to many businesses), however in context of the fact that their owner has converted £305M of debt into equity, I guess it’s all relative.

What I was most interested in was the “City Code” guide that Cook introduced.  This is a 120 page document describing in great detail, standards of behaviour that they expect all employees of the club – including players – to ahdere to.  I couldn’t help but feel that this is a leadership challenge in the making.  Wayne Rooneys recent off-field antics and other Premier league players would challenge any code of conduct I’ve ever seen and from a leadership point of view, and  if the code isn’t rigorously applied at all levels, then they are simply words in a book, consistency counts in the leadership business.  A brave move.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t fail to be impressed by Cook today. He was very articulate and I could see that he is implementing a clear vision for the club, “one house of football” was mentioned a number of times.  Brand was aligned to values and carried through rigorously to the mulitple platforms they market via.  There is a clear expectation of where and how they want to grow and I liked his description of them being in the “talent management” business,   Cooks years at Nike clearly coming to bear there.  There must be a lot of pressure fulfulling the expectations of a fabulously wealthy owner, a fanbase with decades of expectation which previously have been unfulfilled and a workforce witnessing dramatic change.

Connecting business leaders within the fan base is a good idea, having Marco Pierre White do the breakfast is an even better idea and a great way to guarantee bums on seats, friends in high places.  For the next event (assuming there is one),  I’d issue attendee lists so that you could peruse who was there, issue name badges and start a Linkedin group for the invitees to really start connecting up before they come.  Still, was nice to be invited and was well worth the time to hear Gary share his vision.

Quite a night, last night.  I managed to pick up the Manchester Director of the Year award at the annual Institute of Directors North West dinner, held in Manchester.  Around 360 of the great and good in North West business turned out in their best clobber, for a bit of dinner and entertainment.

The competition was really stiff across all the fourteen award categories which you can see here.  Some brilliant businesses and brilliant leaders, all well worthy of their place there on the night.

However, a fantastic evening got better as it went on.  I also picked up the overall award for North West Director of the Year, which is selected from all the entries, across all the categories, stunned is the only word that comes to mind.  It resulted in quite a night of celebration which went on to the early hours, a real career highlight.

Awards like this are fantastic.  It would be great if I could split it up like one of those 3D puzzles and give a piece to the brilliant team of people I work with at Brother.  Everyone in the business has contributed to help me look good, thanks to you all, you rock. 

In addition, there were loads of people I knew in the audience from the Manchester business scene, I was overwhelmed by the fantastic and generous comments I received on the night and the wonderful messges I’ve received today via e-mail and Twitter.  The support was terrific and really overwhelming.

In closing, a big thank you to the judges on the night, who chose to get behind someone that runs a big business, rather than a new start entrepreneur who continue to be en vogue.  Sometimes I’ve heard people think that running a big business is some easy ride, for some maybe, not for the one I run.  We have enormous complexity, a highly demanding marketplace and a high requirement for customer acquisition, so I’m delighted that the judges spotted that and felt it worthy for recognition.

Speaking in Manchester this morning at the Insider Technology breakfast, Dave Carter, Head of Manchester Digital Development Agency outlined his vision for how the region is going to get faster in terms of its data transfer speed. This of course should mean faster access for everyone, who can complain about that (especially when I get a paltry 0.5MB at my house), an example was given that a 4GB video would take around 46 seconds to upload. Describing a “Digiopolis”, he cited Amsterdam particularly as one European city that is investing in speeding up its City and the need for Manchester to press on with a fibre optic network. One of the panellists, Sue Woodward from The Sharp Project made some good arguments, one example she gave was about “chasing the sun”. Essentially, transferring your software development from one time zone to the other, to speed up development time whilst also making use of global talent. This requires a big pipe and a Manchester company “Mofilm” are already doing this, great stuff and innovative workstyle! My key point is that in order for Manchester to achieve it’s economic objectives identified in the MIER report, then big grand plans need to be set in place to make fibre optic available to all businesses at a competitive rate. Priority should be on business for me. Business will contribute more, be more competitive, contribute more GVA and grow the region. Chatting afterwards to the President of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Dr. Moneeb Awan, he supported the view, at the same time expressing that this is a required backbone for tech/software innovation and calling for an acceleration of the plans. The main thing is, people are talking about it in the region and everyone ultimately needs to benefit, however it’s vital that there is a joined up approach to gain maximum impact. Manchester has aspirations, great people and a desire to get things done, that’s why it’s such a great place to be. Once it gets “Digioplis” status, it will be a significant step in the direction of further regional growth. I’ve made a further post on the subject here.

“Create Magic”. That’s what serial ad man Sir John Hegarty of global agency Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty said in a speech tonight to staff and clients of Manchester ad agency BJL. Almost Bransonesque in his style and delivery, Sir John delivered ten key points aimed to enthuse the agency folk to greater things. These were: – 1) Agencies can innovate. 2) Agencies can create media opportunities 3) Agencies can create programming. 4) Agencies creativity can be the media. 5) Agencies can persuade clients to be brave. 6) Agencies can tackle growing social issues. 7) Technology has always been a spur to creativity, now more than ever. Agencies can expand their influence with clients. Integration is now vital. 9) Agencies can invent products. 10) Agencies can use the recession to be more creative. As any good ad man would, Sir John showed plenty of example of his work such as this piece for Xbox and this piece of programming, which ended up on MTV. As you often find with great leaders, Sir John had humility in bags, an underlying confidence, rock solid principles and an authentic delivery. That’s how you survive in the advertising world for 44 years. Rock on.